Baroness Blackstone
Main Page: Baroness Blackstone (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Deben (Con)
I will not take it, therefore, as I did on the occasion when she mentioned it.
What I want to say to the Committee is simply this: many people in many institutions will be tempted to look at the price of death as against the price of life for those who are very seriously ill. There is no doubt at all that all the countries that have already enacted laws of this kind have found this to be a problem. They have all found the difficulty that, for people who have been given about six months to live—even if that is a false diagnosis—there is a tendency to say, “Well, they’re going to die anyway”. A number of noble Lords and noble Baronesses who support this Bill have said that.
I want a society that cares about those people right to their last moment in which they die. That is what I think we are here to do. I hope that does not sound too sentimental, but this is about the difference between kindness and love. Love is something with a backbone that cares for people right to the end and makes sure that they do not feel a burden. We cannot do that for everybody, but the trouble with this particular Bill is that it does not make it absolute and determined that we do look after people and that we find out whether they feel a burden and help them not to feel a burden.
Any of us who has had loved ones who are ill know that, even if they are not seriously ill, the very first thing they do is feel a burden—a burden on their spouses and on other people. That is what decent people do. Other decent people spend their time trying to make sure that they do not feel a burden. Other decent people try to see what is at the heart of their misery—that is the phrase that is used. We should be here to try to remove the misery from people in their last six months, just as we should throughout the whole of their lives. Those who are proposing this Bill seem so committed to getting it through somehow that they think we must not in fact consider what the rest of society is.
I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, hopes to interrupt me, but, before she does, I will just say this. I am not one of those Conservatives who believes in the kind of free market operation where you do not deal with things at all. I am, in that sense, a socialist; I believe in the individual in society. The whole problem with this emphasis on autonomy is that it is not acceptable unless you see the individual in society. The trouble with the Bill is that it tempts those who find it more convenient to allow people to kill themselves because it is more expensive for them to continue to live.
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
I was not going to interrupt the noble Lord, but his last remark does lead me to interrupt him. I do not think there is anybody who backs the Bill because they think it is more expensive for people to continue to be treated. Nor do I think it is the case that those people who back the Bill are in some way unaware of the societal context in which people live and die. We are all aware of that.
Moreover, some of the comments from those who oppose the Bill or are trying to introduce more amendments to it neglect the fact that most doctors—nobody is perfect, of course, but most doctors—are fully aware of their obligations as members of society and of a caring profession. They spend a lot of time trying to help and advise their patients not just about their immediate medical needs but their other needs. It is certainly the case that most general practitioners will help a patient who is suffering because of poverty. They will find ways in which they can access funding and support the patient in terms of their worries about being a burden. So I do not think anybody who supports this Bill suggests for one moment that we should accept that a patient who feels they are a burden should die just for that reason. The reason they do think they should die, if they want to, is that their suffering is intolerable. That is what lies behind those who back this Bill’s motivation.
I hope the noble Lord will accept that and understand that there is nothing in what we are saying which suggests that we simply want people to be able to die because they need to be autonomous. We want them to have the choice to be able to die, if that is indeed their choice and if the circumstances which they are in are such that their suffering is enormous. Most of us who back the Bill have experienced this in our own lives and seen what happens in those circumstances. I have sometimes wondered, in listening—I have done a lot of listening and not much speaking on this Bill—that some of the people who raise all these amendments have not had the experience of seeing the terrible suffering of people who have already been diagnosed as terminally ill.
Lord Deben (Con)
I agree with everything that the noble Baroness said. That is not what I was saying. I was saying that many people, in seeking to get the Bill through, are not facing up to the fact that there are many people in society who will see this as an opportunity to find the better thing for them if their old grandmother decides to take her own life.
Some of us have spent many years working—albeit not as effectively as the noble Lord, Lord Mawson—among people who, frankly, are wonderful and have dealt with huge difficulties in their lives. But we have also found people who would be happy for the death of their grandmother for a matter of a very few pounds—and if their grandmother has a house worth £200,000, the situation becomes much clearer. They know what they want and they know what the pressure would be. In asking whether people have seen that, I must say to the noble Baroness that I have seen that—more times than I would really like to go through with her. Those of us who have worked all our lives in those circumstances—I think the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, will support me—will recognise that that is the case.
All I am saying about this amendment is that it helps to protect people against that, and it does so by saying that we, as a society, should be concerned that, if somebody thinks they ought to end their own life, even if they have only six months to live, because their housing is so bad, because they feel a burden to their family, or because they think the National Health Service should not be spending the money on them, we ought to do what is necessary to remove that reason. If, because of intolerable pain, they still wish to end their life, the Bill will be a proper means of doing it.
I will end with a simple point. The noble and learned Lord has explained why he does not want a reference to intolerable pain in the Bill itself. I understand that. That is why the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, has produced this answer, which is crucial not just because of the sort of society in which we live but because, if you do a public opinion poll, you see that people think that this Bill is about allowing people in intolerable pain to end their life. But it is not about that. What the noble Baroness is trying to do is to make sure that it is about that and that we do not become a society for which this becomes the cheaper way or the way in which people can use their influence to gain their own ends. The best way to add to that support is to support what she said. It is also a way for us, as a House, to say to the world that we are not concerned with this assisted suicide for any reason other than as an autonomous choice about real, terrible suffering.